Innovating through Hybridisation: Art‐Based Pedagogy in Leadership Development

• Published in: The international journal of art & design education Vol. 40; no. 4; pp. 748 - 760
• Main Authors: Holtham, Clive, Biagioli, Monica
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Wiley 01.11.2021; Blackwell Publishing Ltd
• Subjects: Art Education; Arts; art‐based methods; Business Administration Education; change; Cooperative Planning; Decision Making; Design; Hybridization; Innovations; Interdisciplinary Approach; Interdisciplinary subjects; Leadership; Leadership Training; paper folding; Pedagogy; Periodicals; Reflective Teaching; zine
• ISSN: 1476-8062; 1476-8070
• DOI: 10.1111/jade.12386

This study outlines a multi‐year collaboration journey between academics in two widely disparate disciplines: art/design and business/management. Eventually this culminated in co‐designing and co‐developing a folded paper zine, and related processes, to improve private reflective practice, particularly of managers and students of management. This zine co‐design journey was articulated through the lens of Schumpeter’s hybridity perspective ‘new combinations’, in the context of transdisciplinarity. As both commercial and social organisations face increasing complexity and uncertainty, the rationally oriented tools developed for planning and decision‐making in more stable times need to be augmented by those which assume or even welcome ambiguity and not‐knowing. This creates an opportunity to draw on art‐based methods such as zines, given that the arts acknowledge, value and address such uncertainty.